DONNA LADD

Judge Pickering Defenders Insult
Mississippi

They say Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. has
changed. Like most old segregationists, Pickering apologists tell us,
he's come a long way since the heady years between "Black Monday"
1954, the date of the US Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of
Education decision, and 1973 when the state Legislature finally
closed the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. His defenders say
Pickering just went along with the old racists ó who have all
apparently disappeared into thin air. His efforts to outlaw
miscegenation, to undermine the one-man-one-vote principle, to weaken
the Voting Rights Act, to shorten a cross-burner's federal-mandated
sentence, to keep the Sovereignty Commission reporting on 87,000
subversives ó none of that matters in 2002. The Washington
Post excoriates us liberals in an editorial, saying we're just
glossing the "complexities" of the rather indisputable
facts.

After all, as the Post and the
Jackson Clarion-Ledger here reminds us, then-attorney
Pickering challenged members of the KKK in 1967. And even Malcolm X
and Lincoln later altered their views, you know. Therefore, their
reasoning goes, the new and approved Pickering should be appointed a
5th Circuit judge, looking out for the interests of Mississippi,
Louisiana and Texas, together comprising the largest and poorest bloc
of minorities in the country.

Who's glossing what here? Allow me to speak
as a Mississippian whose family helped pay the taxes that funded that
cowardly spy agency lovingly called the Sovereignty Commission. The
Commission that provided the White Citizens Council (the precursor to
today's Council of Conservative Citizens; www.cofcc.org) with lists
of businesses and citizens seen as sympathetic to the "agitators" so
they could run them out of business (or town). The one that compiled
the home addresses of black school children who tried to enroll in
public school in 1964, just in case anyone needed to know. The one
that provided lawmakers reports of subversive activity like black
Citizens Bank employee Benny Stennis using the bathroom at "Mr. W. H.
Holland's Amoco service station" in Philadelphia, Mississippi (File
No. 2-112-43). Director Erle Johnston Jr. wrote to the state: "The
report shows that Stennis made apologies for using this facility and
said it was an emergency. -- [I]f you think we should extend
this investigation, we will be happy to do so."

As a state senator, Pickering voted twice to
keep funding the Sovereignty Commission. Perhaps he didn't know the
agency had fed the license plate number and precise descriptions of
Rita and Michael Schwerner and their Volkswagen (File No. 2-46-71) to
law enforcement and Klan members around the state months before
Schwerner and two other civil rights workers were killed in my
hometown. Or that investigator A. L. Hopkins told the state on
January 25, 1965, less than months after Chaney, Goodman and
Schwerner's bodies were found, how many times each was shot and what
order and which Klansmen had confessed (File No. 2-112-53). The state
wasn't exactly building a case against the murderers. "[T]he
defense attorneys already have this information and probably will
handle it in the manner it should be handled," Hopkins
reported.

Today, Pickering has "integrity," Jackson
Clarion-Ledger editorial director David Hampton writes. (The same
paper would have thought so back then as well.) No doubt, whether out
of change of heart or political expediency, Pickering has shown
progress, drawing kudos from some Mississippi blacks for his race
reconciliation efforts.

That's admirable, but it doesn't matter
here. Federal judgeships aren't consolation prizes for a few years of
decent behavior. Pickering protege Trent Lott and George W. Bush put
up a man with a hostile record toward existing federal civil rights,
voting and discrimination protections, knowing he would draw
complaints. Lott and Bush likely balanced the anticipated outrage
against their need for the racist vote (remember Lott and the CofCC;
Bush and Bob Jones University?). And Bush had his dad's debt to
repay. "As the Bush state chairman, Pickering was responsible for an
aggressive 'get-out-the-vote' drive that resulted in Bush receiving
60.5 percent of the popular vote (in Mississippi) on election day,"
bragged a Dec. 8, 1988, Republican National Committee press release.
"Charles' experience as a party activist and his keen political
judgment will provide President-elect Bush with invaluable
insight."

Imagine the Republican response to a
Democratic "party activist" -- much less a Malcolm X -- being
nominated for the federal bench. But Pickering has always been a
political animal, following the racist path from the Mississippi
Democratic Party through the Goldwater transformation of the GOP that
resulted directly from segregationist outrage. More from Hampton: "He
is a longtime laborer in the GOP, a Republican long before being
called Republican was cool in Mississippi." This cracks me up, and
not just the idea that there is a "cool" Republican in Mississippi
today. It's that this is meant as a defense of Pickering, who was
never, I promise, a Lincoln or a Black-White Republican. He joined
the Grand Old Party the same time that most of the racist power
structure took refuge there and, yes, it was about race. So what
Hampton is saying, intentionally or not, is that Pickering was a
segregationist Republican before the Mississippi GOP thought they
should start looking more moderate and attract black voters. That'll
convince us agitators.

The supporters need to watch their
hypocrisy. They tend to be of the punitive sort -- the
three-strikes-and-you're-out-for-life,
buy-a-joint-and-you'll-never-vote-again crowd. Many probably agree
with Justice Scalia that a judge should step down if he has
objections to the death penalty, being that it's legal. (But don't
dare apply that same logic to abortion.) I find all this
but-he's-changed rhetoric a little disingenuous.

But it's the taking-on-the-Klan praise that
really frosts my toes. This is the ultimate bigotry of low
expectations; the bar here is practically on the ground: Apologists
are actually giving a would-be circuit judge an ovation for once
prosecuting the low-life scum of the KKK. I hate to be a pooper here,
but even the Sovereignty Commission was starting to sour on the Klan
by the late 1960s. Yes, too many Mississippians allowed the Klan to
flourish in the early 1960s, but after the two white men guaranteed
that an otherwise-routine lynching attracted national attention,
cemented federal civil-rights legislation and later meant actual
prison time for race murderers, the state started realizing that
blatant violence was counter-productive. The KKK rapidly fell out of
favor, especially with white business owners who needed black
customers to survive. By 1967, it was daring but not exactly
revolutionary to challenge the KKK.

But to hear the Pickering crowd, and sadly
our daily newspaper, a reformed segregationist is the best this state
can offer right now. Maybe it's true; I hope not, but our
contribution to the federal bench should be rejected, if so. Make
Mississippi dig deeper for a federal judge who doesn't harbor
resentment toward federal law. It's groovy that our segregationists
might want to redeem themselves; they can find plenty of ways,
perhaps starting with public apologies. Pickering could even get a
landmark named after him like the Ross Barnett Reservoir and the Paul
Johnson State Park (he who called the NAACP "Niggers, Apes,
Alligators, Coons and Possums"). But it will not help this state, or
the rights of thousands of Southern citizens, to risk setting back
the federal judiciary 40 years.

With any luck, by now, the nomination of
Charles W. Pickering Sr. has been relegated to the history books
where it belongs, somewhere between "James Chaney" and "Michael
Schwerner."

Donna Ladd (www.donnaladd.com) is a
writer in Jackson, Miss. Write her at
comments@donnaladd.com.